1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to a world-wide network (e.g., the Internet), and more particularly to a system and method for automatically personalizing web services based upon individual user usage history.
2. Description of the Related Art
The World-Wide-Web is increasingly becoming a medium for accessing traditional services and conducting business rather than just browsing information. People visit web sites, such as Amazon.com, Ebay.com, Yahoo.com, Priceline.com, etc., to obtain these various services, such as to shop for books, to participate in auctions, to check for stock quotes and to access search engines.
Sets of one or more of these services are provided through Web sites (or portals). Besides offering these services, typical portal sites also provide other information, such as advertisements, links to related sites, and so forth. Most users who access these sites typically do not care about all of the services and information offered them. By contrast, they normally access the portal to obtain specific services. This means that the user typically will click only on relevant links and enter information only into the search boxes that are useful to him or her. Hence, a user who repeatedly visits a portal site will normally use only part of the site. Repeated visits can show exactly what parts of the site the user normally accesses.
Browsers are unaware of these user usage patterns for specific portal sites. Hence, a browser will display all of the contents of a portal site to a user whether or not the content is of use to him or her. This irrelevant display of information greatly hinders users, especially if they depend on devices with limited form factors (e.g., handheld devices, voice browsers, etc.) or with low bandwidth connections. Conventional systems repeatedly download, process, and display information that will never be used. Thus, they waste the resources of the browser, slow down the user's system, and take up unnecessary bandwidth by displaying irrelevant content. This mode of operation makes the user's “Web session” inefficient.
In addition to hindering users with these types of devices, the extraneous information of web pages also acts as a barrier to accessibility for people with disabilities. For example, blind users who rely on text-browsers must process the information on a page word-by-word. Hence, it is often difficult for them to locate specific sections of the page to obtain the services of interest. As another example, users with cognitive handicaps often find it difficult to process all of the information and media in a page at once. Hence, by displaying the irrelevant information on a page, these users face unnecessary difficulties in executing their desired transactions.